Sunday, June 5, 2011

Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Producing Artistic Director Mark Clayton Southers has long shown an affinity for making the most and best of the work of August Wilson. And now, finally, his company is offering a new production of a Wilson play at the August Wilson Center. Southers didn’t direct this version of King Hedley II. Instead it is guided by Eileen J. Morris who has major credits staging Wilson’s work elsewhere.

Morris and her cast make it vivid, dynamic, colorful and perilously dramatic. As Christopher Rawson points out in his superior program notes, this is Wilson’s darkest play and that the layered plot may be hard going for some audiences. I briefly studied the story line before attending and that gave me a sense of the essence of the major developments. However, given that Wilson regularly evokes what he calls “black street vernacular” I did not find the dialogue easy to understand. I especially had trouble with nearly every word said by one leading performer who seemed to be constantly swallowing her words and emphases

Wilson is always trying to say more than to just depict actions, behavior and results. He’s known for writing about how and why the African-American people he represents do what they do. Those characters deeply ponder the details of their own lives. Such background is also at the heart of his writing, concerning daily struggles with love, death, spirituality and making ends meet in a culture where race relations frame and lie behind what happens or can’t happen to them.

King Hedley II is Wilson’s next to last play and is set in the 1985 Hill District. Although the title suggests some kind of long-ago classic and it could be considered a tragedy, Hedley is no king. King is his first name. Yet, trying to rule his life, produce an heir and maintain his honor, Wilson’s choice of a name has resonance. Hedley and a buddy named Mister eke out existence selling stolen refrigerators and plot a robbery to finance a new business. King spent years in prison for having killed a man who severely cut his face. Back home he lives with his mother Ruby and his wife Tonya. Ruby’s one-time lover Elmore returns to the neighborhood, intent on getting back together with Ruby. Like King, he too spent time in prison for having killed a man. Always present is a neighbor called Stool Pigeon, a half-crazy, sometimes chronicler of life and death on the streets.

Clearly violence and vengeance lurk within the grimy, trash-cluttered framework, personified by several loaded guns. Much of what is said, meanwhile, in the three hours this runs, is about what these people have done and will do next, detailed in many extended monologues. Tellingly, Wilson has both King and Elmore find empathy for the men they killed. Yet, had I not done background reading, I’m not sure how much I could have followed.

Solidly truthful performances by three leading actors always make those characters clear and memorable. Benjamin Cain’s impressive version of King seethes with believable rebellion against a society which keeps him down. As Elmore, Kevin Brown vibrates with personality and panache. Plus Tyla Abercrumbie brings sweet, genuine maturity to the role of Tonya, King’s wife. Yet I found Chrystal Bates’ as Ruby, an equally important role, constantly unintelligible, a case of style over substance. Director Morris probably knows the script so well that she may have forgotten that some of us white folks aren't all that familiar with the kind of language Wilson writes. Often, on opening night, when Ruby spoke, the only people laughing where those sitting near Morris. They got it, even if the rest of us didn't seem to. Meanwhile, Jonas Chaney never overdoes the idiosyncrasies of Stool Pigeon but he raced through too many lines which could have been more interesting and clear.

During the performance parts of recordings by Miles Davis and John Coltrane faded in and out, a distracting, pointless, embellishment, sometimes annoying when competing with dialogue.

Mark Clayton Southers also designed the set, a thing he always does superbly and which, as always, gives substance to such productions. Even though he did not stage this, the cast and director bring their own substance and truth to the urgent tale.

About Me

Contact me: gordon.spencer@cox,net
My theatre reviews aired Sundays on WRCT Pittsburgh on "The Best of Broadway" 2-3pm.The playlists and those for "Classics" (3-5) are found at "Gordon Spencer on WRCT." Other reviews appeared in Pittsburgh CITY PAPER.I wrote and broadcast some for the Sunday Arts Magazine on WQED-FM and hosted programs until 2005 budget cuts. In Pittsburgh reviews also appeared in now-defuncts PULP and THE FRONT WEEKLY. Much of that time I wrote for PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE and taught Italian. Acting: roles at South Park Theater and for Throughline Productions.
1992 to 2001 Milwaukee reviews were in SHEPHERD EXPRESS, “The Best of Broadway” was on WOKY, I hosted jazz programs (WYMS) and classical music (WFMR).
Previously, Albuquerque: news reporter for KKOB-AM, classical music and jazz on KHFM, jazz on KUNM teacher of jazz history at the University of New Mexico also teaching Italian, having lived in Italy in the 70s.
A New Yorker for 18 years, most often I was on the air with classical music at WNCN, but for a few years a professional actor. More about the career is at blogged "Station Breaks by Gordon Spencer."